MARTINSVILLE, VA — (BTW21) March 27, 2025 – Two days after the controversial forcible removal of City Council member Aaron Rawls from a council meeting, he, alongside fellow councilor Julian Mei, held a press conference to voice their concerns about the incident and the broader implications for the city’s leadership and reputation.
The incident occurred at Tuesday’s council meeting when Mayor L.C. Jones, who believed Rawls was insulting a staff member, cut off Rawls' comments. A sheriff's deputy then approached Rawls, asked him to leave, and escorted him out of the room after Rawls collected his belongings.
The removal came after Rawls made comments about a potential pay increase for City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides.
Days before the meeting, Rawls had sharply criticized the council in an email, questioning the ongoing negotiations concerning Ferrell-Benavides' pay.
On Thursday at noon, a crowd of residents and members of the press gathered outside the Martinsville Municipal Building as Rawls resumed the comments he had been unable to finish two nights prior.
“I don’t want this to be the next step in the drama,” Rawls told the crowd. “I want this to be [about] what are we doing now and how do we go forward.”
At the press conference, Rawls emphasized the importance of addressing the city’s leadership and its impact on Martinsville’s image.
“It’s a people problem, and I think we saw some of that two nights ago,” he said, referring to his removal from the meeting. He called the incident a civil rights violation but stopped short of confirming any plans to take legal action.
Both Rawls and Mei suggested that the circumstances surrounding the removal were intentional, particularly after Rawls began discussing executive pay raises.
The crowd cheered when Rawls claimed that Ferrell-Benavides had signaled for the deputy to remove him, an accusation she denied.
“No one signed the deputy,” Ferrell-Benavides said in an email Thursday evening.
“She is a court deputy and acted as trained in her court role. While the moment was difficult, I do not have the authority to remove a member as city manager. The mayor is the chair and is the only one with the authority to request the removal of someone who is out of order.”
Ferrell-Benavides added that while the mayor sought to move the meeting along, he did not specifically ask for Rawls’ removal. Mayor Jones was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
Rawls’ comments about a potential pay raise for Ferrell-Benavides have become a contentious issue within the council.
Ferrell-Benavides had argued during the meeting that her salary was lower than at her previous position, but Rawls has raised concerns about the timing of any pay increase, particularly as the city faces a potential property tax hike.
Ferrell-Benavides was hired as city manager in 2023 with a salary of $175,000.
Based on the city’s transparency portal, her current salary is listed at $183,855.
“We need to sit down and talk about the brutal tax increases people are looking at,” Rawls added during the press conference.
During a closed council meeting last week, the council voted to grant Mayor Jones the authority to negotiate a new contract with Ferrell-Benavides. Although Rawls was absent from the meeting, Mei was present.
Mei explained his vote at the press conference, stating that it was his suggestion to leave the negotiations in the mayor’s hands.
However, Mei stressed that the council would still need to approve any contract that resulted from those negotiations.
“Do all your negotiations, have your chit-chats, work it out,” Mei said. “But you must bring the contract to council for approval, yea or nay.”
Mei also expressed shock at the forcible removal of an elected official. “I cannot think of a more disturbing experience occurring in the history of Martinsville, maybe the commonwealth itself,” said Mei, who was elected to the council in November. “Aaron’s rights of speech under the First Amendment have been violated.”
He further stated that if any elected official were forcibly removed from a meeting in the future, he would leave in solidarity.
Both Rawls and Mei emphasized the importance of Martinsville’s reputation and the need for the city to move past the incident. “We showed off a whole lot of ugly,” Rawls said, voicing concerns that the city’s internal disputes would harm its image with potential business partners and state officials.
Mei echoed this sentiment, stating, “Social media and algorithms out there, they pick up this stuff.
If you Google ‘Martinsville’ or ‘Martinsville City Council,’ all of this stuff is showing up.”
Despite the tension, both Rawls and Mei expressed their commitment to continuing their work with the rest of the council. “I have absolutely reached the end of my tether with this nonsense,” Mei concluded. “We have so much within our grasp, we just need to reach out and take it.”
As Martinsville’s leadership navigates the aftermath of this heated incident, residents will be watching closely to see how the city addresses these growing concerns and whether any further tensions arise within the council.
Our tax base cannot continue to support such lavish salaries. Government employees should NOT be at the top of the community pay scale. I feel our council should look at pay scale from a different point of view.